Professor of Politics and Government Julie Webber offers her analysis on the school shooting phenomenon on WGLT’s Sound Ideas. According to Webber, the underlying problem is that the digital revolution has “detached us from each other in a dangerous way.”

We can see this, she argues, in the evolution of school shootings that occurs as media goes digital. With the prevalence of YouTube and other social media platforms, school attacks take on a “gaming” character. Shooters, according to Webber, often try to cite or improve upon Columbine, the first large scale school shooting in the United States.

The problem, she says, goes beyond the U.S. and can be found in other countries as well. This second era of attacks “against civil society” is a generational problem of social and political relationships whereby “human interactions and care” fall by the wayside in an era of digital culture.